Great Paintings of the World/Channel 5
I was pleasantly surprised by the first programme presented by Andrew Marr on the Mona Lisa.
Would it be more about Andrew Marr than Leonardo da Vinci ?
What could Marr tell us about the Mona Lisa we do not already know?
On both counts I was wrong. Marr knows and loves his art and brought in more experts. I learned that the Mona Lisa was never handed over to the merchant who commissioned it but Leonardo kept it always by his side.
It was never that well known till the early part of the twentieth century when it was stolen from the Louvre by an Italian who worked there.
The thief wanted to repatriate it to Italy. The French police put up photographs of it all over Paris and thus its reputation and awareness gathered.
As to the picture itself, Marr explained how the stare of the eyes work – by putting one on the side of the eye – and how the enigmatic smile was created.
No one straddled science and art before or since like Leonardo.
Marr referred by word and image to Leonardo’s extraordinary anatomical drawings.
Deborah Ross in her Mail on Sunday column gave it one star out of 5 on the basis that the series included no women artists.
She went to list her famous female artists and told us she could go on. I wish she did as I could only think of those omitted as Gwen John and Dora Carrington.
A classic case of an uninformed over-opinionated reviewer letting her prejudices distort her view of a most instructive programme.
My friend Martin Gayford who has written a well-informed account of Van Gogh’s stay in Arles is appearing in the next on the Sunflowers of Van Gogh.
Omigod Gayford is a man.
